Recently, the linguistic issue has increasingly become the subject of political rhetoric, campaign promises and flirting with voters. Often, it is only a cover for sore problems in the social and economic spheres, but there are countries where the question of one or another language as the state language is “standing on the edge”. The language policy of the state, as a set of measures aimed at supporting one language or several languages, always aims to rally the various nationalities that inhabit the country into a single state whole - the nation. Another thing is how exactly the desired is achieved.
We have before our eyes many historical examples when an inept language policy led to the completely opposite result — instead of rallying the people, it divided them, fueled separatist sentiments and led to internal tension, sometimes ending in civil conflicts. So, in the UK in the middle of the twentieth century, teachers punished students who used Welsh, Irish or Scottish words in their speech. The armed conflict in Northern Ireland was not only religious in nature (Catholics versus Protestants), but also linguistic (Irish versus English).
In France, in 1794, the Republic adopted a law that forbade the use of any other languages and dialects in the country, except for literary French (in fact, a dialect of the province of le-de-France). This law was repealed only in 1951, but over a century and a half the Occitan, Basque, Provencal, Breton, Italian in Corsica and others almost disappeared. Has this linguistic policy led to the unity of the people? Not at all - and mass demonstrations demanding the revival of the regional languages of the peoples inhabiting France are a vivid example of this.
In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, language policy was aimed at maneuvering and a kind of appeasement of the conquered territories. Despite the fact that communication between the monopoly and the colonies was in German, the Austro-Hungarian government supported the national languages: opened Slovak schools, supported creative Ukrainian and Polish groups, and sponsored talented Italian youth. Therefore, the "Spring of the Peoples", and later the collapse of Austria-Hungary, did not happen on a language issue, but purely on a political one.
Unlike tsarist Russia, where everything “non-Russian” was suppressed, from 1917 the ideology of supporting regional languages began to be promoted. However, things did not go beyond propaganda. In the 30s, the opinion was actively circulated that only 15 fraternal peoples lived in the USSR, and these 15 languages of the Union republics were actively supported. At the same time, without any support from the state, for example, remained German, Old Mongolian, Finnish and other languages, the speakers of which compactly or absent-mindedly lived on the territory of the USSR. In addition, the government proclaimed the languages of some republics as "underdeveloped", requiring "language construction" - for example, Moldova was forcibly transferred from the Latin alphabet to the Cyrillic alphabet. In the 1950s and 1960s, the language policy of the USSR was latently, but radically changed: with all the declaration of support for the languages of the Union republics, it was not fashionable to speak non-Russian, to be a “national leader”, it was a sign of backwardness and rural origin. We can observe the sad consequences of this policy on the example of Russified Kazakhstan, Belarus, partially Ukraine and Moldova.
Language policy in Russia, unfortunately, inherited many of the trends of the late USSR. In addition to declarations stating support for the languages of national districts, republics and territories, the government of the Russian Federation often forgets about minority languages compactly living in the state. Of course, every citizen should know the state language of his country, but this does not mean that he is forbidden to speak and teach his children to speak their native language. If the state does not support the languages of national minorities at the highest level , using the levers of administrative power, the media and the encouragement of writers writing in the languages of national minorities, after some time these languages and dialects will die out, and we will remain feeling dissatisfaction, resentment and ethnic strife .